Unit III

Customer Acquisition Tactics: The ACTMAN Model

Targeting, the most common focus of acquisition tactics, is only one part of managing
acquisition. In this section we outline a model called ACTMAN, an acronym for acquisition
tactical management. The ACTMAN model distills the acquisition process into six critical
elements that a firm can manage for more efficient and effective customer acquisition. These
elements are as follows:
1. Targeting
2. Awareness generation and product positioning
3. Acquisition pricing
4. Trial
5. Usage experience and satisfaction
6. Post introductory pricing and the creation of long-term value for the product or service
1.Targeting
A firm should target both those customers who recognize that they have a need or desire for the
firm's offerings as well as those who have not yet identified their needs or desires but who could
benefit from the firm's offerings. This latter group may be more difficult to acquire because the
firm will have to aid their need recognition using vehicles such as suggestive advertising or
sampling.
Three methods exist for targeting customers: individual-customer targeting (first-degree
targeting); segmented targeting (second-degree targeting); and self-selection targeting (thirddegree targeting), which relies on the customer to identify himself or herself by responding to the
firm's offers. First-degree targeting is the most desirable, but in some industries it is difficult to
employ cost-effectively.
First-Degree Targeting
The two commonly used first-degree targeting methods are profiling and regression scoring.
Both methods depend on the availability of demographic, behavioral, or psychographic data on

potential customers that a company then matches with prospects' likelihood to buy or with their
potential customer equity value. Once the characteristics of high-value prospects have been
identified, the most attractive prospective customers can then be targeted and solicited.
Second-Degree Targeting
Second-degree targeting utilizes segment data rather than individual data, and should be used
when individual customer or prospect data are unavailable.
Sometimes a firm can classify prospects and customers into segments for which data (often
readily available governmental data) already exist. Many consumer-product firms, for example,
develop lifestyle clusters based on geodemographic census tract data from the U.S. Census
Bureau. They then analyze these clusters to determine which best match current customer
profiles.
Second-degree targeting, like first-degree targeting, uses statistical models. An example: General
Seed, a direct marketer of floral seeds, had demographic data for each U.S. ZIP Code. It also
knew the number of mailings and the response rate (the number of customers acquired each year)
for each ZIP Code. Using standard regression techniques, the model predicted the ZIP Code
response rates as a function of demographic and climatological variables. The firm then
determined the economic cutoff level above which a ZIP Code--that is, all the people in it-should receive a mailing.
Third-Degree Targeting
Even when customer data are not available at either the individual or segment level, a firm can
use targeting techniques. In these cases, targeting must be accomplished through marketing
programs. This is called self-selection or third-degree targeting.
In self-selection targeting, a firm makes a marketing offer, such as introductory pricing or a
promotional incentive, designed to cause certain desirable types of customers to respond. For this
approach to succeed, a firm must be able to determine whether a specific promotion, price, or
product can attract the desired prospects. The channel chosen to convey the offer will also affect
who responds.
Targeting Summary
The most efficient targeting method is individual scoring, which allows a firm to select
customers to be targeted based on their economic payout to the firm. Segment-based models are

less efficient, but are better than nondatabase (self-selection) targeting methods as long as the
predictive power of the models is strong enough to differentiate between segments.
Whenever possible, companies should do their targeting at the level of individual customers. If in
doubt, do a quick calculation of the cost of more focused solicitation versus the customer equity
value of customers missed and gained as a result--you'll likely be convinced.
2. Awareness Generation and Positioning
Once a firm has identified its target customers, it must make sure that they are aware of its
product or service. After all, a prospect cannot try a product until he or she knows it exists. There
are many tactics a firm can use to generate awareness. Direct marketing communication can
combine awareness generation with product offers for trial, and is the method of choice when
first-degree targeting is used. Mass communication is a less expensive mechanism for generating
broad awareness in second- and third-degree targeting environments, or where the value of an
acquired customer is relatively low.
For example, many Internet companies use mass communications (television, radio, billboards,
print) to generate awareness and to invite customers to log on to their Web sites to learn more
about products and services. These companies have learned that awareness generation through
direct communications, even through portals and other Web services such as AOL, tends to push
acquisition costs too high. Instead, these companies use lower-cost vehicles for awareness
generation and more targeted communications for customers once they have responded. This is
where positioning comes in.
According to Philip Kotler, "Positioning is the act of designing the company's offering and image
so that they occupy a meaningful and distinct competitive position in the target customers'
minds." Positioning is critical to new customer development because it defines customer
expectations about the product experience, and it determines whether customers will try a
product or not.
In order for a product or service to be included in the customer consideration set, the firm must
manage the critical steps of proper awareness building and positioning while the customers are in
the information-gathering stage of their purchase decision-making process. Firms also need to
remember that if positioning and awareness-generation efforts promise too much, then customers
may try the product, but retention rates will fall short as a result of customer dissatisfaction. A
firm must carefully balance its initial positioning against the product's ability to deliver the

promised benefits, or risk destroying the potential customer equity from retention and add-on
selling.
Acquisition is an important part of marketing, but not the only part--linkages across acquisition,
retention, and add-on selling are crucial for companies that want to maximize customer equity.
3. Acquisition Pricing
As customers accumulate product information and begin to evaluate their alternatives, pricing
becomes a factor. The general trend in customer-oriented pricing is to price low to acquire
customers and to raise prices later. This tactic, known as penetration pricing, works in many
situations. The biggest challenge for a firm that chooses penetration pricing lies in determining
the most effective introductory price level. Guidelines exist on how to set introductory prices
under various circumstances, assuming that a firm can tailor its prices by customer segment.
For example, introductory prices should decline as a segment's maximum retention potential
goes up. As a corollary, the more responsive a group is to retention marketing expenditures, the
lower its introductory price should be. Introductory prices should be higher for groups that
become more price sensitive over time, because a firm ultimately will have to lower prices to
retain them as customers. The higher introductory price will compensate for this future decrease
in revenue. (Among the customers who fall into this category are those who typically buy only
on promotion.) Higher introductory prices also make sense for many evolving markets, in which
more purchase options will likely become available, leading to increased customer price
sensitivity over time.
A special category of customer acquisition is reacquisition of lapsed or lost customers. In this
instance, it is almost always possible to use existing purchase data to estimate customer asset
value with confidence. As a result, firms can set "winback" prices that are below those offered to
other acquisition targets in recognition of the high asset value of the reacquired customers.
Companies should be cautious, though: It is very easy to get into a reacquisition war, as longdistance telephony providers did when they used teaser rates and other price-based promotions to
acquire switching-prone customers from each other, over and over again, at tremendous cost. The
flaw, of course, was in incorrect assumptions about how long reacquired customers would stay,
and the risk of "re-loss."
4. Retention Pricing

It may seem strange that retention pricing is a consideration of acquisition management.

However, if one recalls that customer acquisition is a process that continues beyond the actual
purchase, and that post-purchase behavior is the final stage of the customer purchase-decision
model, then the relevance of retention pricing to acquisition becomes clear. In order for
customers to leave the acquisition phase and move into the repeat-purchase phase of the
customer life cycle, they must reach an acceptable level of satisfaction with the product
experience, and expectations about future experiences must be attractive. Assessing the
attractiveness of future experiences involves some consideration of future pricing.
Acquisition pricing can greatly influence expectations about retention pricing. The acquisition
price acts as a reference price for customers in their assessment of future prices. If the retention
price is too high relative to this reference price, customers are less likely to repurchase the
product or service. As a result, pricing strategy must include how a firm will manage the change
in price between acquisition and retention. If a very low acquisition price attracts prospects who
would not otherwise try the product, then charging a significantly higher retention price will cost
the firm a large number of first-time buyers. That does not necessarily invalidate this strategy,
but a firm must understand the complete financial implications of this pricing strategy and the
fact that the quality of the product may not suffice in keeping these types of customers on board.
In general, firms should avoid acquisition pricing tactics that create price expectations that
retention pricing cannot meet.
One way to manage reference prices is to use special promotions that signal one-time price
discounts off regular prices. Another way is to list long-run prices along with the special
introductory prices in price communications. The danger remains, however, that once a price
goes up from the low introductory price, the customer will not feel that the product provides a
value above his or her threshold.
5. Trial
Many firms identify product trial as a key strategic objective. It marks the point at which
customers move from evaluating alternatives to actually making purchases, and it is often the
first signal of interest that customers communicate to the firm. From a firm's perspective, the
goal of the trial stage, besides generating revenue, is to demonstrate to customers that the firm's
product or service can meet their needs.

Firms commonly use price discounts or free offers as mechanisms to induce trial. Although such
tactics may prove successful at initiating a first usage, it is important to manage them carefully,
both because customer expectations still are being established during the trial stage and because
at the time of first usage, the customer may not have committed to repurchasing the product. If
product expectations are very high as a result of initial selling communications, and if the
product fails to meet these expectations, the customer probably will not repeat-purchase, and the
lifetime value of that customer will likely be low or even negative.
It is at this stage that product strategy begins to play a role in customer equity creation.
Companies should manage their product portfolios to include acquisition products-those that are
appealing to customers early in their buying life cycles. Sloan's brand ladder at GM from
Chevrolet to Cadillac is one example; other examples of acquisition products include demand
deposit accounts at banks and books at Amazon.com.
6. Usage Experience and Satisfaction
In addition to marketing communications, which play a key role in establishing customer
expectations, two other critical activities significantly influence the customer's product usage
experience and satisfaction:
* Product design and the provision of specified benefits
* Postpurchase servicing of the customer
The firm's ability to meet expectations depends on its research and development team, which
manages product or service design; its operational staff, which controls production and delivery;
and its customer service team, which manages postpurchase servicing. It is important that each of
these teams be aware of its role in customer management and the development of customer
equity. If any one of these areas of the firm does not deliver on its responsibilities, the customer
is unlikely to be satisfied. Even if the product or service is clearly superior to any other on the
market, if expectations go unfulfilled, then the customer will be disappointed and less likely to
repeat-purchase.

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Methods and Tools for Acquisition

Brief descriptions of the tools and tactics that companies can use:
* Databases and data sources
* Metrics and accounting
* Data analysis tools
1. Databases:
Prospect Databases
Databases and Data Sources for Acquisition
Prospects are not customers, and the firm needs to use different marketing tactics to affect their
behavior. Therefore, companies should separate prospect databases from customer databases.
Prospect data fall into two categories: historical marketing data and profile data.
Historical marketing data track marketing activity by individual prospect. These data include the
prospect source, each marketing contact, and the response to each marketing contact.
Customer Profile Databases
Profiling customers (or prospects) is the process of obtaining detailed information about them.
This information can range from demographic data (such as family size) to personal data (such
as hobbies). The results of profiling help a firm to determine the best messages to convey,
products to target, and communications to avoid. They can reduce costs by helping a firm to
target new or existing customers for add-on selling more efficiently. In short, they are an
important part of customer equity management.
There are six main categories of profile data:
1. Customer sales potential
2. Customer characteristics (such as demographic, lifestyle, and industry classification data)
3. Summary customer equity measures
4. Organizational charts and key personnel (business-to-business)
5. Influencers and specifiers

6. Customer attitudes
Sales potential is one of the most valuable elements of the customer or prospect profile. This data
element includes the customer's potential sales volume, not just actual purchases. Analysts
compute potential in different ways, depending on the market under consideration. For example,
credit card companies often use information about outstanding balances from all the credit cards
of a cardholder. (They obtain these data from credit bureaus.) This information provides insight
into the customer's profit potential. Industrial or business-to-business firms often use firm size
and industry type as surrogates for sales potential. Firms can obtain estimates of customer
potential from industry trade associations or third parties.
A profile database also must contain demographic data. For consumer products, these data
usually also include lifestyle information. Industrial firms typically include firm size and
industry classification in their demographic data. They may also include personal information
about customers, organizational charts, and other pertinent details.
Attitudinal data are important because they indicate how a customer evaluates the firm. For
example, retained customers (such as airline passengers) may nonetheless have negative attitudes
about the products or services that they use. These vulnerable customers are more likely to
defect, so firms need to take steps to affect their attitudes. Databases that contain attitudinal data
help firms to identify these customers and to design marketing programs aimed at affecting their
attitudes. Historically, few firms tracked attitudinal data because of the cost and difficulty of
collecting such data. However, with the advent of the Internet, the cost of customer surveys has
declined and will continue to do so.
Causal Marketing Databases
Causal marketing databases capture data on the marketing programs offered to individual
prospects and customers. They are extremely complex to create, because firms rarely track
marketing activities at the individual-customer level. However, they are also extremely valuable,
because the information they contain can significantly improve marketing efficiency and
effectiveness. By knowing the cost of and responses to various marketing activities, companies
can determine which pay out and which are unprofitable.
For example, companies can use targeting models developed from causal data to identify which
customers should receive specific marketing communications. Years ago, Time Life Books sent
mailings for a book series to its entire customer base. The company then realized that it could

target its mailings, which greatly reduced overall mailing costs without significantly reducing
overall response. To do this, Time Life developed sophisticated targeting models. It sent sample
mailings to the customer base, tracked marketing offers and responses by customer, and then
scored customers according to their responses. In subsequent mailings, Time Life targeted those
customers whose scores indicated they were likely buyers.
A business-to-business firm applied a similar approach. It tracked all sales force activity and
found that it should greatly reduce direct sales calls on a large set of its prospect and customer
base because the expected revenue from these customers could not cover the cost of the calls.
The firm put in place a sophisticated two-tiered marketing system, which substituted phone calls
for a large number of the sales calls. The company found that response did not drop; in many
circumstances the customer actually preferred the phone call to an hour spent with a salesperson.
2. Acquisition Metrics
Top management is often surprised by the high cost of customer acquisition. How can companies
determine what acquisition expenditures make sense? Basic knowledge of acquisition costs,
initial profit-to-cost ratios, and new-customer investment statistics provides management with a
better understanding. As these measures become more widely used, firms can benchmark against
other firms in similar industries. Ultimately, these and other customer equity metrics can, and we
believe should, become part of firms' financial reporting as companies truly begin to manage
customers as they manage other valuable financial assets.
Critical summary statistics for acquisition include the following:
* Number of customers acquired, which can be tracked over time and matched to a company's
acquisition goals.
* Acquisition rate, which is the ratio of acquired customers to targeted prospects. This statistic
measures both targeting and solicitation effectiveness. It can be broken down further to assess
success rates with different groups of prospects.
* Cost of acquiring a customer, which can be matched to customers' retention and add-on selling
values, and which also influences how aggressively companies should expand their acquisition
expenses.
* Total new-customer investment, which allows a company to compare its investment in creating
customer assets with its investments in capital equipment, product development, and research.

* The ratio of acquisition cost to acquisition equity, which shows how much of its acquisition
investment a company recovers in the first period. High-recovery situations, as noted earlier,
reduce the risk of increased spending on customer acquisition.
* Total new-customer investment as a percentage of sales and profits. These percentages are
critical measures because they show whether a firm is investing in new-customer acquisition at
the same level as in prior periods or simply is milking existing customers for profitability.
Another critical measure is the net present value of a new customer. Once acquired, a new
customer has a future value, which equals the sum of all future purchases minus the cost of
goods sold and future marketing expenses. Firms must understand the future value of acquired
customers so that they can determine whether investing in new customers is profitable. If it is not
profitable, the firm must change its acquisition approach.
To increase total customer equity when the NPV per customer declines, it is necessary to
increase, not decrease, the investment in new customers. There is a limit to this increased
investment, however. The per-customer acquisition cost must not exceed the marginal NPV for
the "last" customer acquired. As long as the firm acquires customers with NPVs greater than
acquisition costs, the firm should be willing to increase its customer acquisition investment.
Otherwise, the long-term value of its customer base will decline.
3. Data Analysis Tools for Acquisition
Tools for converting customer data into insights for acquisition, retention, and add-on selling:
Customer-focused data can be used, among other things, to do the following:
* Identify target customer segments
* Determine customer acquisition rates
* Determine customer retention and defection rates
* Identify opportunities for add-on selling
* Understand and evaluate consumer responsiveness to marketing programs
* Track and analyze customer buying patterns
* Measure the economic value of the customer
* Forecast and manage future customer behavior

* Develop more effective customer-focused strategies

Two techniques that can be used to target new customers for acquisition: Profiling and
regression scoring.
a. Profiling
The simplest way to determine how to target new customers is to profile existing ones. In
profiling, a firm identifies the characteristics of its best current customers and then targets
noncustomers with similar characteristics. These "non-customers" can be first-time purchasers
from the firm or individuals who have purchased from other divisions of the firm.
An Example of Profiling. To identify prospects for acquisition targeting, an analgesics retailer
began by obtaining demographic data at the individual-customer level. The company compared
heavy users and category purchasers with noncustomer users.
How to Profile. A relatively simple form of profiling is "best customer" profiling.
Steps include the following:
1. Collect demographic and profitability information about current customers.
2. Append this information to each customer's record in a profiling database.
3. Add behavioral data (such as sales histories) and psychographic data to each profile.
4. Determine which variables distinguish the best customers, worst customers, and nonresponders.
5. Use these variables to identify the highest-potential prospects.
Indexing, another form of profiling, compares the general population of a product's consumers
with the firm's existing customers for that product. To index:
1. Partition customers in the database using several demographic variables.
2. Determine the number of buyers that fall into each partition.
The index for each partition reflects the ratio of the number of the firm's customers in that
partition to the total number of the buyers in general population that fit that partition.
In its simplest form, this index shows for which demographic categories a firm has more than the
expected number of customers and for which it has fewer. Those partitions that have significantly

higher indices indicate customer segments that the firm has effectively targeted and acquired.
Partitions with lower indices represent those segments that the firm acquires less effectively.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Profiling
Almost any firm that has a customer database can easily profile. However, when profiling,
analysts must remember that the firm's targeting strategy can influence the characteristics of its
customer base. Put another way, it should not be surprising when a company that has been
targeting a specific audience finds, through profiling, that its customers come from that audience.
As a result, the firm's profiling risks overlooking other valuable segments of potential customers.
Analysts should also interpret profiling indices with caution. Some segments may have high
targeting potential but not appear frequently in the database; therefore, profiling will not identify
them as attractive targets. Also, a firm should assess the potential customer equity of each
partition before using a profiling technique to target new customers. A segment with a low index
may actually be a very high asset value segment that the firm's acquisition strategy
underemphasizes. Finally, profiling does not include the statistical analysis needed to assess the
strength of various characteristics as predictors. It tells analysts the characteristics of the firm's
best customers, but not which characteristics are the most powerful identifiers of potential "best"
customers.
b. Regression Scoring
Companies can also use regression scoring, a more difficult but more accurate technique than
profiling, to target new customers.
An Example of Regression Scoring. Contract Stationers, Inc. sells office supplies to businesses.
Because making sales calls on every prospect costs too much, management decided to target
specific prospects instead. The firm obtained a targeted prospect list of firm names and
individuals from various publications and list sources, such as Dun & Bradstreet.
Using these data, the firm made a series of sales calls on a randomly selected set of prospects and
then noted who responded, added customer characteristic data to each prospect's record, and ran
a scoring model to determine which characteristics generated the highest likelihood of response.
The firm aggregated the prospects' scores into decile groups. (Scores also can be grouped into
smaller sets, such as 5 percent groupings, if researchers prefer.) The firm then calculated the
likelihood of purchasing for each decile group. The firm determined the cutoff score by

computing a break-even customer equity value, which was based on buying probabilities,
marketing costs, and long-term expected sales to the customers.
By using regression scoring, this firm improved its acquisition efficiency and avoided sales calls
on prospects with negative long-term value. It targeted only customers whose projected customer
equity was positive and thereby increased its total customer equity by a substantial amount.
How to Perform Scoring. As suggested by the example, regression scoring steps include the
following:
(1.) Draw a random sample from the overall population of prospective customers.
(2.) Obtain data from the sample that profile individual consumer characteristics.
(3.) Initiate a marketing campaign directed at the random sample, and record which individuals
become customers.
(4.) With that information, develop a regression scoring model--a series of weighted variables
that predicts which prospects are more likely to become customers based on their characteristics.
Once researchers have the model estimates, they can do the following:
* Calculate scores for prospects who were not in the random sample by plugging their individual
characteristics into the regression equation
* Rank-order prospects from highest to lowest, according to their scores
* Target the firm's marketing campaign at those prospects with scores above a designated cutoff
score, which is based on a combination of financial and marketing factors
Advantages and Disadvantages of Regression Scoring
The primary advantages of using regression scoring models for acquisition are that they measure
the relative importance of variables in determining which prospects to target, and they provide a
scientific method for selecting cutoff values. The result is significantly increased marketing
efficiency.
The primary disadvantage of regression scoring is its complexity relative to profiling. However,
we recommend that firms seriously investigate implementing regression scoring, even if it
requires using outside resources. Improved targeting efficiency and effectiveness usually justify
the increased complexity and costs.

Conclusion:
Managing acquisition strategies and tactics is vital to creating, sustaining, and enhancing
customer equity. Acquisition should not be viewed as a secondary element in a customer equity
marketing system, even in the most retention-oriented industries. Similarly, traditional marketing
strategies that fail to consider acquisition's links to retention and add-on selling are also deeply
flawed.
As the ACTMAN model shows us, all elements of the acquisition process--from the creation of
customer expectations to post-purchase customer service--have long-term implications for the
customer--firm relationship. A retention-focused firm that neglects its acquisition strategy will
never maximize retention and add-on selling. By the same token, any acquisition strategy that
fails to consider its long-term effects on retention and add-on selling is incomplete.